R U Experienced?

Best and Worst of Activate! April 9, 2009

After seeing all of the first year projects for Activate, I think that our class had the best project, but since we can’t pick ours, I think that the Makeover Project inside the Room next to the Butterfield park was the best. It was a great experience as it made the participant scared as you were getting your hair cut. They had real sounds that created great feedback, when they had scissors cutting your hair, and also the buzzing of the razor. Their experience also had great visceral components to the experience, because you could see hair falling onto you as you had your hair cut, and also the hair colour was the the exact same as your own. Not only that but before they started cutting your hair they took a picture of you before you had your makeover. Also they spun you around so you couldn’t see what was being done to you in the mirror. This created an element of curiosity for the participant as they didn’t know what they would look like in the end. The experience was somewhat tactile, because of how you could feel the hair falling down, and also the way the hair dressers were pulling on your hair, pushing against it. In the end of this experience, they provided you with your end result picture, in which someone photoshoped a wig on your head, and it was funny to view in the end. Not only that but they even sent the image to our emails, once the activate event was over. This was a good idea to take the participants email, so they would be able to receive something even after the experience was finished. Overall, this experience was really fun, and it was one that i remembered most!

The worst experience I think of Activate was the Alice and Wonderland project. As I walked into the entrance of the installation, I thought that I would receive something amazing, as it was alice in wonderland. However when I entered, all I received was a group of people saying “Happy Birthday” , sitting down on at a tea party table, with decorations. They also asked us to play a ball game with a stick, and that wasn’t really fun, as there was no real feedback to that game. They asked us to take some cookies, and asked us to play that ball game, that was about it. There wasn’t really anything to experience, and I think they could of done alot better, with this particular theme. Overall this was a bad experience, and I didn’t receive any good feedback from that installation. 

Our project however created great feedback, and the affordances were really strong because of the video and sound created when the ball was put into the whole. The participant was able to place themselves in 6 different experiences which were extremely fun. I think it worked our amazing!